Pacific Northwest Day Hikes

Catching Up

October 10, 2011

This is a hodgepodge of photos from late September and early October. It has been a busy time. The annual Hawaii trip took us to Oahu, with stays in Honolulu and on the beach at Ko Olina. Lots of time for just kicking back and reading in the sun. Great sunsets too. As always, click on the photos to enlarge.

We got back home to the onset of Fall. On one of the last warm, sunny days I expect for a while I wanted to get some pictures of the Old Grist Mill east of Woodland, Washington.

And the creek that drives it.

There hasn’t been any serious hiking for several weeks. David and I had hoped to hike Silver Star from the south side in September but that trip was a total bust. Apparently during the drive out over the forest road a rock damaged the valve on one of the front tires so by the time we got parked the tire was half flat. We headed back down the road hoping to get to pavement but wound up changing the tire on a very rocky surface. Not fun; I was glad to have David’s help.

I did get to hike this past weekend with a group from Friends of the Gorge. It was a good hike with a friendly group, led by Jim Denton who schooled us about the 1991 Multnomah Falls fire and generally answered questions about local geology and plant life. Good stuff. We took off from the Angel’s Rest trail head, up to Angel’s Rest for a lunch break (thanks for bringing brownies Margo), then crossed to the east to the top of Wahkeena Falls. Down via Wahkeena Falls and then the return trail to Multnomah Falls Lodge. About 7 miles with 1,500 feet of elevation gain. No photos on the hike but I did snap a couple at Shepard’s Dell before the hike began. The sun was just coming up over the south side of the Gorge.